He rubbed his hands on the legs of his trousers. He closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. He began his spell.
He spoke firmly, striving for perfect enunciation and articulation and no hesitation, leaving no room for uncertainty in constants, variables or the transitions between them. Each element in the spell had to be perfect for his manipulation of the magical force to work as planned. It was like building an arch, where each block depended on the other. If any was to fail, the whole structure would collapse.
The unfamiliar syllables twisted in his mouth, as if they were reluctant to be uttered, but he formed them and spat them out, one after the other. He could feel sweat springing from his brow, but he didn't spare time to wipe it.
He came to the last three elements – one for duration, one for intensity and the last a 'signature', a unique item that made the spell his own. He felt a moment of doubt, but he thrust it aside and pronounced each component crisply.
As soon as the last element left his lips, Aubrey knew something had gone wrong. He was plunged into blackness, utter nothingness, then pain seized him, a shattering, all-consuming agony that tore a howl from his lips. His mind reeled. It was a raw, overwhelming shock, as if he had been flung against something hard, dropped into ice water, smashed between hot irons, slashed by a thousand razors, rolled in acid. He felt as if a great beast was shaking him by the neck, as if he were being squeezed through a hole the size of a pencil, pummelled, flayed, burnt alive. It was beyond a simple physical sensation. He was torn apart and exposed, beyond hope and beyond help.
With a final wrench which seemed to upend the whole universe, the pain suddenly stopped. It was replaced by an insistent tugging sensation. Aubrey was able to see again, but his mind recoiled from what he saw.
He was looking at his own body, collapsed on the floor.
It took him a giddy moment of denial and confusion, but he knew that his soul had been separated from his body.
His vantage point seemed to be somewhere near the ceiling. George had approached the boundary of the focusing figure and was looking distressed. His mouth was working, but his words were muffled, unclear. Aubrey wondered if his hearing had been affected by the spell. Hovering, he noticed that something was wrong with the focusing figure, but he couldn't determine exactly what it was. Something to do with duration, intensity?
In the midst of a sense of dislocation that could be like no other, Aubrey found time to berate himself – for heedless bravado, for reckless posturing and for shoddy preparation. His anger blazed, then he quelled it. He had other charges, but they'd have to wait. Methodically, he began to search for a remedy for his stupidity.
His body looked forlorn, crumpled as it was. His dark hair was obscuring one side of his face and he wanted to reach out and push it back.
With what? he wondered. He turned his attention and discovered what a soul looks like.
He told himself it was a failure of imagination, or perhaps simply a handy representation using available materials, but his soul looked just like the body he'd left crumpled on the floor, down to the tweed jacket and high-waisted trousers. He found he was actually disappointed that, apart from a level of insubstantiality, it wasn't more startling in form.
Interestingly, his soul-self was holding a translucent golden cord tight in its right hand. It was stretched taut and was the source of the tugging sensation, which was a deep, nagging feeling at a most fundamental level, far below conscious thought. He groped for a comparison and the nearest he could come was the need to breathe.
Aubrey was doing his best to cope with the sense of displacement he was experiencing. Terror threatened to envelop him, but he kept it at bay thinking rationally. If he could observe things carefully, he was sure he could work out a solution.
Then he traced where the golden cord led and he felt like a man whose house had been invaded by assailants, who had then been kidnapped, stripped, beaten, and imprisoned, before being told that all his family had died. It was an almost unbearable shock on top of a series of almost unbearable shocks.
A void had replaced one of the longer walls of the room. The other end of the cord disappeared into it. Pearly-grey tinged with silver, like massy clouds caught by sunlight, the void was in motion, boiling and turning, and he was being drawn towards it by the tugging on his golden cord.
In an instant of complete apprehension, Aubrey knew that the true death lay on the other side, the place from where no traveller returns. His current state, this soulself floating above his erstwhile body, was a halfway stage, a moment to pause (for reflection?) before the final departure.
No, he thought. This is not right. He tried to let go of the golden cord and found he couldn't. He shook, but his fingers remained wrapped around the mysterious cord. He could shift his grip, he could move along it, but otherwise the cord was as much a part of him as his hand was.
Aubrey twisted, trying to turn away. It felt as if he were trapped in a river, fighting against a strong current. He thrashed, struggling to resist the tidal pull of the way that he'd inadvertently opened, straining to increase the distance between the void and him.
In his flailings, he came to face downwards, towards his vacated body. Another golden cord lay in its hand. The end of this cord was flapping loose, as if it had recently been severed, between Aubrey's soul-self and his body. It drifted in the air, but it was losing its vitality and colour. Even as he watched, Aubrey could see it coiling back on itself, the loose end falling back to drape over his body lying on the floor.
Aubrey didn't think. He lunged for the loose end, but the cord in his right hand pulled back. The pull from the void was growing stronger. Inch by inch, the void was drawing him towards it.
Suddenly, the irresistible pull eased. Aubrey jerked around to see that George had ignored his instructions and had blundered through the focusing diagram, scuffing it with his shoes.
Aubrey gathered himself and dived towards the receding end of the golden cord. He seized it with his left hand, but nearly let go when he was convulsed with a familiar pain; it was the wrenching that had marked the separation of his soul and his body. But having felt it once, this time he was less overwhelmed by it. Despite being racked by spasms, he didn't let go of the cord in his left hand.
Below, Aubrey glimpsed George working frantically on his motionless body. The golden cord leading from it was becoming fainter. The one in his right hand was vibrant and glowing, and still tugging at him. Aubrey's soul was caught between his body and true death, suspended on the ultimate brink.
He knew that he couldn't remain like this, in an unnatural halfway state. The void was urgent, insistent. He found himself wondering about what lay on the other side of the opening. Perhaps it was a chance to find out the answer to the greatest mystery of all.